If there’s one silver lining that can be drawn from Guillermo del Toro’s decision to walk away from Hellboy, it’s that the director has cleared up his schedule to work on a handful of passion projects, most notably The Shape of Water.
Part fairytale, part Cold War thriller, the director’s latest is due to swim into theaters in December, and Fox Searchlight has today conjured up the dreamy first trailer, one which cordially invites you into del Toro’s weird and wonderful world of mute maids and shady experiments.
From the off, we’re introduced to Sally Hawkins’ Elisa and the miserable life she leads, as she spends her days scrubbing the floors of a top-secret laboratory. But as Hawkins’ mute lead soon discovers, an amphibian-like creature dwells within the confines of this grubby old laboratory, and from that point on, The Shape of Water looks set to become a heartfelt fairytale about one outsider bonding with another.
Blending the fantastical with the real, this is Guillermo del Toro in his natural habitat, and even the creature design alone looks to take cues from the filmmaker’s work on Hellboy and the beloved Pan’s Labyrinth. In line with early rumors, it’s also been confirmed that the illustrious Doug Jones (Star Trek: Discovery) plays the part of the so-called “Aquatic Man.”
The Shape of Water, an other-worldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1963. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of silence and isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment.
Directing from a screenplay he co-wrote with Vanessa Taylor, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water will pull into port on December 8th. Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, and Michael Stuhlbarg complete the ensemble.
